Zoya Akhtar’s Tiger Baby films accused of big data theft, office boy arrested
Mumbai Police has arrested two people for stealing a hard disk from Tiger Baby’s Bandra office. The missing drive contained unreleased film and web series content, with a loss estimated at over Rs 13 lakh.
Two people, including an office boy, have been arrested for stealing 66 hard disks containing vital film and web series data from filmmakers Zoya Akhtar and Reema Kagti’s production house, Tiger Baby, in Bandra, Mumbai, police said on Tuesday.
According to police, data worth more than Rs 13 lakh has been destroyed due to theft. PTI. The missing hard disk contained significant digital content related to film and OTT projects made under the banner, including unreleased footage, rough edits, edited footage, advertising projects, post-production material, archival material, backups and full movie data.
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The theft was discovered on Monday when Mehjabeen Shaikh, executive assistant at Tiger Baby Digital LLP, lodged a complaint at the Bandra police station about the missing devices. Police said the drives had storage capacities ranging from 16TB to 72TB and contained material related to the projects made in heaven and Zoya Akhtar’s segment from Netflix India’s 2020 horror anthology Ghost Stories.
During the investigation, the police identified Mohammed Shahid Azim Khan, 28, an office boy from Vakola, Santa Cruz, as a suspect. According to the police, Khan was in charge of keeping the storage drive safe. They alleged that he stole hard disks and sold 24 of them on the gray market in the last five months.
Police said Khan sold each device to Ritesh Suresh Shah, 44, a Borivali resident who worked at a stationery shop, for Rs 15,000 to Rs 20,000. Investigators said Khan had systematically stolen 24 hard drives over five months alone. Initial estimates also suggest that more than 100 hard disks have gone missing from the production company’s office over the past few months.
Both the accused have been booked under Section 306 of the Indian Justice Code, which deals with theft by an employee, along with other relevant provisions of the Indian Justice Code and the Information Technology Act.
He has been sent to police custody till May 29. Police said the stolen hard disk contained key production and archive material related to several film and web series projects.
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